Artist
Johann Sebastian Bach
Johann Sebastian Bach appears 4 times in our Baroque and Laurent Garnier — A Life in Twenty-One Records lists, placing as high as No. 1. Hand-curated, with a reason for every pick.
- Ranked entries
- 4
- Appears on
- Baroque and Laurent Garnier — A Life in Twenty-One Records
- Years
- 1721–1749
- Highest placing
- No. 1 in Baroque
- Updated
- 2026-08-30
Appears on
Goldberg Variations
1741
Ranked No. 1 in Baroque
Thirty variations over a bass line, returning at the end to the aria unchanged. Glenn Gould recorded it twice, at opposite tempos, twenty-six years apart, and both are right.
Mass in B minor
1749
Ranked No. 2 in Baroque
Assembled at the end of his life from music written across four decades, for a liturgy his own church did not use. The largest single achievement in Western music, put together from parts.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 3
1721
Ranked No. 8 in Baroque
Nine string players, no soloist, and every one of them busy. Bach sent the set to a margrave who appears never to have had them played, which is the most Bach fact available.
Brandenburg Concerto No. 5
1721
Picked by Laurent Garnier — A Life in Twenty-One Records
The bridge to Nina Simone, and why it is here at the end. Listen to Bach and you hear the exact classical piano she is playing inside her jazz records — which is the whole argument: it is all one music.